Best Portents Quotes | Short & Famous Sayings

“It had all been quite uncannily painless. I was left with a sense of not having suffered enough. Only sometimes in dreams did I experience certain horrors, glimpses of punishment which would perhaps yet find its hour.”

Suffering Dreams Punishment Iris Murdoch Uncanny Painless Portents A Severed Head

Book:A Severed Head

Source: A Severed Head

“She was every inch the skeletal goddess that had been promised by the bones of her feet.”

Humor Beauty Fantasy Feet Humour Young Adult Bones Body Image Promises Skeletons Dieting Portents Skinniness

Book:Strange Places

Source: Strange Places

“Nothing happened; yet there were disturbing signs and portents.”

Iris Murdoch The Green Knight Signs Foreshadowing Portents

Book:The Green Knight

Source: The Green Knight

“[Alternate translation:] The Divine Spirit found a sublime outlet in that wonder of analysis, that portent of the ideal world, that amphibian between being and not-being, which we call the imaginary root of negative unity.”

World Science Spirit Found Wonder Divine Negative Ideals Roots Unity Analysis Imaginary Sublime Translations Outlets Ideal World Portents Amphibians

Author:Gottfried Leibniz

“There various news I heard of love and strife,Of peace and war, health, sickness, death, and life,Of loss and gain, of famine and of store,Of storms at sea, and travels on the shore,Of prodigies, and portents seen in air,Of fires and plagues, and stars with blazing hair,Of turns of fortune, changes in the state,The fall of favourites, projects of the great,Of aid mismanagements, taxations new:All neither wholly false, nor wholly true.”

Source: The Poetical Works of Alexander Pope: In Three Volumes Complete : with His Last Corrections, Additions, and Improvements, Together with All His Notes, as They Were Delivered to the Editor a Little Before His Death : Together with the Commentary and Notes of Mr. Warburton

“The phantom-host has faded quite, Splendor and Terror gone-- Portent or promise--and gives way To pale, meek Dawn.”

Way Giving Gone Promise Terror Dawn Host Pale Splendor Phantoms Faded Meek Portents

Book:Battle-pieces and aspects of the war [poems].

Source: Battle-pieces and aspects of the war [poems].

“In the zone of perdition where my youth went as if to complete its education, one would have said that the portents of an imminent collapse of the whole edifice of civilization had made an appointment.”

Ifs Made Said Whole Youth Civilization Zone Collapse Appointments Edifice Perdition Portents

Author:Guy Debord

“The night ... it is filled with bestial watchmen, trammeling the extremities and the interstices of the timeless city, portents fallen, constellated deities plummeting in ash and smoke, roaming the apocryphal cities, the cities of speculation and reconstituted disorder, of insemination and incipience, swept round with the dark.”

Night Dark Cities Filled Rounds Smoke Fallen Disorder Ashes Timeless Speculation Deities Dark Night Extremity Roaming Portents

Author:Samuel R. Delany

“Rivers are roads that move and carry us whither we wish to go. [Fr., Les rivieres sont des chemins qui marchant et qui portent ou l'on veut aller.]”

Moving Wish Rivers Portents

Author:Blaise Pascal

“There are certain events which to each man's life are as comets to the earth, seemingly strange and erratic portents; distinct from the ordinary lights which guide our course and mark our seasons, yet true to their own laws, potent in their own influences.”

Men Light Earth Law Certain Courses Destiny Influence Events Strange Ordinary Seasons Mark Guides Comets Erratic Portents

Author:Bill Vaughan

“Zombies are then a symbol of our own mad urges to destroy ourselves, and a terrifying portent that we might succeed.”

Might Succeed Mad Symbols Urges Zombie Portents

Book:Gospel of the Living Dead: George Romero's Visions of Hell on Earth

Source: Gospel of the Living Dead: George Romero's Visions of Hell on Earth

“There is, to be sure, sometimes only a small difference between being alert to possible danger and allowing oneself to become terrified to the point of paralysis by seeming or imagined portents.”

Sometimes Differences Danger Oneself Allowing Terrified Seeming Paralysis Portents Small Differences

Author:Sherwin B. Nuland

“Autumn is the American season. In Europe the leaves turn yellow or brown, and fall. Here they take fire on the trees and hang there flaming. We think this frost-fire is a portent somehow: a promise that the continent has given us. Life, too, we think, is capable of taking fire in this country; of creating beauty never seen.”

Thinking Country Turns Fall Given Fire Tree Promise Creating Capable Europe Seasons Brown Autumn Yellow Continents Frost Creating Beauty Portents

Author:Archibald MacLeish

“I saw ten thousand talkers whose tongues were all broken, I saw guns and sharp swords in the hands of young children, And it's a hard, it's a hard, it's a hard, it's a hard, It's a hard rain's a-gonna fall.”

Children Hard Hands Young Fall Saws Broken Thousand Ten Gun Rain Tongue Young Children Talkers Portents

Author:Bob Dylan

“Always maintain the attitude of a student. If you think you've done learning, bitterness sets in, but if you have more to achieve every day, in any arena, that makes each morning's awakening full of potential and cheery portent.”

Ifs Thinking Done Attitude Morning Achieve Students Awakening Bitterness Arena Portents

Author:Nick Offerman

“During the 1960s, the Shanghai of my childhood seemed a portent of the media cities of the future, dominated by advertising and mass circulation newspapers and swept by unpredictable violence.”

Cities Violence Childhood Media Mass Newspapers Advertising Unpredictable 1960s Circulation Shanghai Portents

Author:J. G. Ballard

“In one sense what may pass between the pope and myself may be trivialities. In another sense the fact of talking trivialities is itself a portent of great significance. But the pleasantries which we exchange may, as one church leader said, be pleasantries about profundities.”

May Said Facts Church Talking Leader Significance Pope Profundity Triviality Church Leaders Portents Pleasantries

Author:Geoffrey Fisher

“Let us not deceive ourselves; we must elect world peace or world destruction.”

World War Peace Destruction Anti War Antiwar Deceiving Hype Make Peace Not War Achieving Peace International Peace Peace Not War World Peace Day International Peace Day Global Peace Portents Promoting Peace World Destruction

Book:United States atomic energy proposals: Statement of the United States policy on control of atomic energy

Source: United States atomic energy proposals: Statement of the United States policy on control of atomic energy

“They say that in the hour before an earthquake the clouds hang leaden in the sky, the winds slows to a hot breath, and the birds fall quiet in the trees of the town square. Yes but these are the same portents that precede lunchtime, frankly.”

Fall Hours Tree Sky Wind Quiet Bird Towns Hot Breaths Clouds Squares Earthquakes Lunchtime Portents

Book:Chris Cleave Ebook Boxed Set: Little Bee, Incendiary, Gold

Source: Chris Cleave Ebook Boxed Set: Little Bee, Incendiary, Gold

“Mene mene tekel upsharin,' Jace said with a faint smile. 'You don't recognize it? It's from the Bible, vampire. The old one. That's your book, isn't it?' Just because I'm Jewish doesn't mean I've memorized the Old Testament.' It's the Writing on the Wall. "God hath numbered thy kingdom, and brought it to an end; thou art weighed in the balance and found wanting." It's a portent of doom--it means the end of an empire.”

Writing Mean Art Said Book Ends Found Wall Balance Kingdoms Vampire Empires Testament Jace Doom Old Testament Portents Writing On The Wall

Author:Cassandra Clare

“But it seems to me that a man cannot and ought not to say that he loves, he said. Why not? I asked. Because it will always be a lie. As though it were a strange sort of discovery that someone is in love! Just as if, as soon as he said that, something went snap-bang - he loves. Just as if, when he utters that word, something extraordinary is bound to happen, with signs and portents, and all the cannons firing at once. It seems to me, he went on, that people who solemnly utter those words, 'I love you,' either deceive themselves, or what's still worse, deceive others.”

People Ifs Men Said Stills Seems Happens Lying Love You Strange Ought Discovery Extraordinary Bounds Why Not Deceiving Bangs Snaps Firing Cannons Portents

Author:Leo Tolstoy

“It began as most thing begin. Not on a dark and stormy night. Not foreshadowed by ominous here comes the villain music, dire warning at the bottom of a teacup, or dread portents in the sky. It began small and innocuously, as most catastrophes do. A butterfly flaps its wings somewhere and the wind changes, and a warm front hits a cold front off the coast of western Africa and before you know it you’ve got an hurricane closing in. By the time anyone figured out the storm was coming, it was too late to do anything but batten down the hatches and exercise damage control.”

“Modern dancers give a sinister portent about our times.”

Giving Modern Dance Our Time Dancer Sinister Portents

Author:Agnes de Mille

“When something out of the ordinary happens, it is ridiculous to say that it is a mystery or a portent of something to come... the mystery is created in (their) minds, and by waiting for disaster, it is from their very minds that it occurs.”

Mind War Happens Waiting Mystery Ordinary Ridiculous Disaster Portents

Book:Honor: Samurai Philosophy of Life - The Essential Samurai Collection; The Book of Five Rings, Hagakure: The Way of the Samurai, Bushido: The Soul of Japan.

Source: Honor: Samurai Philosophy of Life - The Essential Samurai Collection; The Book of Five Rings, Hagakure: The Way of the Samurai, Bushido: The Soul of Japan.

“Behind the black portent of the new atomic age lies a hope which, seized upon with faith, can work out salvation... Let us not deceive ourselves: we must elect world peace or world destruction.”

World Age Lying Peace Black Work Behinds Destruction Salvation Work Out Deceiving Portents World Destruction

Author:Bernard Baruch

“Modern dancers give a sinister portent about our times. The dancers don't even look at one another. They are just a lot of isolated individuals jiggling in a kind of self-hypnosis and dancing with others only to remind themselves that we are not completely alone in this world.”